Practical Tips for a Successful Skype Interview

By: Kandice Thorn

"Can you hear me now?"

When I was a kid, my dad had a car phone. Not a cell phone, a car phone with the handset attached to the fixed base with a long spiral cord. To eight-year-old me, it was incredible. This was before even cordless phones had become commonplace, and now I could call my best friend from my dad's truck. The only catch was that it frequently took 3-4 tries for the call to be connected, and once connected, I couldn't actually hear the person on the other end (or they could not hear me). Never mind that - to me it was the coolest thing ever.

Fast forward a few decades. The iPhone is a vast improvement over my dad's old car phone, and the latest technology today is video calling with programs like Facetime and Skype. Yet frequently when I use these programs I feel like I am back in my dad's truck in 1987. The call quality can be atrocious, calls are often dropped, and I sometimes find myself shouting "Can you hear me?" at my computer monitor.

Nevertheless, employers have embraced this new technology as a way of screening potential candidates without paying for costly plane tickets. This means that job seekers, particularly those who are looking for jobs remotely, must embrace this technology in the job-search realm too. The following tips will help make your Skype interviews as successful and glitch-free as possible and will make your interview feel less like 1987 and more like 2025.